FSM Newsletter 25 February 2008
By admin
Hello readers, and welcome once again to [Free Software Magazine]
(http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/)'s fortnightly newsletter, keeping you up to
date with all things free software... AND the top 10 FSDaily announcements for this
week! Enjoy!
General announcements
=====================
Top ten Free Software Daily stories this week
---------------------------------------------
1. **You can now add FSDaily news feeds to your sites!** --You can now add FSDaily
news feeds to your website or homepage. The block will show the latest news from one
of our great feeds. [Read
more...](http://www.fsdaily.com/Community/You_can_now_add_FSDaily_news_feeds_to_your_sites)
2. **Switching Office Suites from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org** --How to set
up OpenOffice.org to work how you want it with templates and clip art,
configurations, shortcuts, and more. I’m here to help. Think of this as a virtual
guide to help you figure out things you’re not quite sure about. [Read
more...](http://www.fsdaily.com/HighEnd/Switching_Office_Suites_from_Microsoft_Office_to_OpenOffice_org)
3. **Adobe Pushes DRM for Flash** --"...Now Adobe, which controls Flash and Flash
Video, is trying to change that with the introduction of DRM restrictions in version
9 of its Flash Player and version 3 of its Flash Media Server software. Instead of
an ordinary web download, these programs can use a proprietary, secret Adobe
protocol to talk to each other, encrypting the communication and locking out
non-Adobe software players and video tools..." [Read
more...](http://www.fsdaily.com/Opposition/Adobe_Pushes_DRM_for_Flash)
4. **OOXML: What's the big deal?** --The OOXML specification has been both
criticized and defended by a number of people, leading many to wonder what the big
deal is. This article illustrates the basis of technical, rather than political,
objections to treating OOXML as a standard. [Read
more...](http://www.fsdaily.com/Legal/OOXML_Whats_the_big_deal)
5. **The Definitive Guide to Bash Command Line History** --" Let me teach you how to
work efficiently with command line history in bash. This tutorial comes with a
downloadable cheat sheet that summarizes (and expands on) topics covered here
(scroll to the end for a download link). In case you are a first time reader, this
is the 3rd part of the article series on working efficiently in bourne again shell.
Previously I have written on how to work efficiently in vi and emacs command editing
modes by using predefined keyboard shortcuts (both articles come with cheat sheets
of predefined shortcuts)..." [Read
more...](http://www.fsdaily.com/EndUser/The_Definitive_Guide_to_Bash_Command_Line_History)
6. **The £99 laptop: how can it be so cheap?** --A new laptop computer for just £99
sounds like the kind of offer found in a spam e-mail or on a dodgy auction website.
But the British company Elonex is launching the country’s first sub £100 computer
later this month and hopes to be making 200,000 of them by the summer. It will be
aimed at schoolchildren and teenagers, and looks set to throw the market for budget
laptops wide open. [Read
more...](http://www.fsdaily.com/EndUser/The_99_laptop_how_can_it_be_so_cheap)
7. **Explore the Universe from your Desktop with Celestia** --While it may not let
you go where no man has gone before, Celestia is an amazing desktop application that
lets you go anywhere in the known Universe.You can view any object in the Solar
System, travel to distant stars, and even leave the Galaxy, traveling faster than
the speed of light, viewing high-res images of objects millions of miles away. [Read
more...](http://www.fsdaily.com/EndUser/Explore_the_Universe_from_your_Desktop_with_Celestia)
8. **Impossible thing #2: Comprehensive free knowledge repositories like Wikipedia
and Project Gutenberg** --Project Gutenberg, started in 1971, is the oldest part of
the modern free culture movement. Wikipedia is a relative upstart, riding on the
wave of success of free software, extending the idea to other kinds of information
content. Today, Project Gutenberg, with over 24,000 e-texts, is probably larger than
the legendary Library of Alexandria. [Read
more...](http://www.fsdaily.com/Community/Impossible_thing_2_Comprehensive_free_knowledge_repositories_like_Wikipedia_and_Project_Gutenberg)
9. **Why Linux Doesn't Spread - the Curse of Being Free** --Linux isn't very popular
on the desktop. It's a far third behind OS X, which is a very far second behind
Windows. Most people cite pre-installed operating systems as the reason. But as a
student of psychology, I see something most people don't. There's one big factor in
why Linux isn't popular on the desktop. Linux is free. I know this sounds like
complete dog's bollocks, but hear me out before judging my sanity. [Read
more...](http://www.fsdaily.com/Community/Why_Linux_Doesnt_Spread_the_Curse_of_Being_Free)
10. **Google behind Photoshop's new Linux compatibility** --Google recently
confirmed in a blog posting that it had paid Codeweavers to help develop WINE to
make Photoshop usable on the well-regarded but still somewhat unpredictable software
package, which aims to replicate Windows libraries to enable popular Windows
applications run in a Linux environment. [Read
more...](http://www.fsdaily.com/Business/Google_behind_Photoshops_new_Linux_compatibility)
_Thanks to dave, Rubuntu, can.axis, peacemaker, extra, nemilar, tony, serdar, and
bridget for these stories!_
Latest content
--------------
**Sharing without Microsoft Exchange** --By Ryan Cartwright. Microsoft Exchange is
the name most organisations go for when thinking of sharing calendars, e-mail etc.
However, there are free software alternatives—and of course you don’t have to go for
the obvious or popular option. [Read
more...](http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/sharing_without_microsoft_exchange)
**Free software Easter eggs** --By Alan Berg. It is grey a dull, overcast day here
in downtown Amsterdam. The weather is rather oppressive, summer’s smile long gone
and my wine cellar miraculously has grown to quiet emptiness. However, I know a not
too-well guarded secret. Hidden in the cracks, just at the edge of your eyesight, is
extra humorous functionality in your favourite free software applications. Silent
professional Easter eggs are waiting stealthily to make you smile. [Read
more...](http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/free_software_easter_eggs)
**Impossible thing #2: Comprehensive free knowledge repositories like Wikipedia and
Project Gutenberg** --By Terry Hancock. Project Gutenberg, started in 1971, is the
oldest part of the modern free culture movement. Wikipedia is a relative upstart,
riding on the wave of success of free software, extending the idea to other kinds of
information content. Today, Project Gutenberg, with over 24,000 e-texts, is probably
larger than the legendary Library of Alexandria. Wikipedia is the largest and most
comprehensive encyclopedic work ever created in the history of mankind. It’s common
to draw comparisons to Encyclopedia Britannica, but they are hardly comparable
works—Wikipedia is dozens of times larger and covers many more subjects. Accuracy is
a more debatable topic, but studies have suggested that Wikipedia is not as much
less accurate than Britannica as one might naively suppose. [Read
more...](http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/impossible_thing_2_comprehensive_free_knowledge_repositories_wikipedia_and_project_gutenberg)
**All the C you need to know for GTK+** --By Andrew Krause. If you want to develop
applications with GTK+, a graphical toolkit used by the GNOME desktop environment,
it is essential that you are comfortable with the C programming language. This
article is meant to give you a short refresher on the basics of C that you will need
to know when developing GTK+ applications. [Read
more...](http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/all_the_c_you_need_for_gtk_development)
**gedit: a powerful, underrated text editor for everybody** --By Andrew Min. Most
computer users spend their entire life looking for the Holy Grail. In other words,
they spend all their life searching for the perfect editor that supports all their
languages, is free as in speech, has spelling, has highlighting… you get the
picture. Obviously, there isn’t a perfect editor out there. However, some come
pretty close. Ironically, one of them is one that any Ubuntu (or in fact, any Gnome)
user has installed, though they may not know it. It’s called gedit (also known as
Text Editor). [Read
more...](http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/gedit_powerful_underrated_text_editor_everybody)
**Pimp your desktop: automate desktop wallpaper with Webilder** --By Gary Richmond.
They say that you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and if you
want to make a good impression with computer lovers with artistic pretensions, a
fancy wallpaper is a pretty good place to start. It can be a real ice breaker. Why
stop there? Why spend fruitless hours dredging through the art galleries of
cyberspace to retrieve a few hard-won digital morsels to decorate your miserable
desktop? Just automate the tedious process with Webilder and free up some valuable
time to hone your other more valuable Unix skills. Webilder won’t make you rich,
improve your productivity or make you irresistibly attractive to the opposite sex
(much) but it’s clever, fun and cool. What more reason do you need to use it? Enough
already with the slick sales talk. Let’s pimp that desktop! [Read
more...](http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/pimp_your_desktop_automate_desktop_wallpaper_webilder)
**Group interview: a graphic view of the open hardware movement. Part 1:
motivations** --By Terry Hancock. Excitement in the Open Graphics community is quite
high as it approaches its first production run of the FPGA-based “Open Graphics
Development” board, known as “OGD1”. It will be available for pre-sale this month
with the first units expected to ship soon thereafter. The board is targeted at
hardware developers, with the specific goal of supporting development and testing of
designs for a fully-documented consumer Open Hardware Graphics Card to be
implemented using an ASIC (thus resolving one of the biggest obstacles to free
software on the desktop). [Read
more...](http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/group_interview_graphic_view_open_hardware_movement_part_1_motivations)
**Can we please stop fighting FUD with FUD?** --By Ryan Cartwright. It has long been
the case that proprietary software companies regularly engage in FUD (fear,
uncertainty and doubt) tactics against their opponents. This particularly seems to
apply to Microsoft’s statements about free software in general and GNU/Linux in
particular. Recently I’ve noticed a surge in the amount of FUD going the other
way—from the FOSS community towards Microsoft and other proprietary software
companies. Why do we feel it is necessary to fight FUD with FUD? [Read
more...](http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/can_we_please_stop_fighting_fud_fud)
Reminders
---------
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